Friday, December 15, 2017

Porn novelist complains about porn

Last week, The Washington Post reported the allegations of six women who had worked for the judge as clerks or staff members, and who accused the judge in detail of crude behavior and sexual harassment.

Heidi Bond, who clerked for Judge Kozinski in 2006 and 2007, said he repeatedly called her in to look at pornography on his computer, and asked if she was aroused by it. ...

Ms. Bond wrote that after one encounter with the judge, “I felt like a prey animal.” The stress of working under those conditions, she said, nearly led her to quit. It damaged her mental health and derailed a promising legal career, which she eventually gave up to write romance novels.

Milan was raised in Southern California. She wrote her first book at the age of ten, and intended to be an author from a young age.[1] After failing spectacularly at this, she changed her mind. She received a double major in mathematics and chemistry from Florida State University in 2000, and went on to get a Master's degree in Physical Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 2003, where she did research on computer models of glassy behavior.[2]

She then went to the University of Michigan Law School, where she graduated summa cum laude,[3] after which she clerked for Alex Kozinski of the 9th Circuit, followed by Retired Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor[4] and Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States.[5] She was a law professor at Seattle University School of Law for several years, teaching contracts and intellectual property, before quitting to write full-time.[6]

So looking at porn derailed her career? On the contrary, it appears that she went on to have a very successful legal career, and then left it for a more rewarding porno book career.

Her blog story does make her sound mentally or emotionally damaged. She is obviously living in some sort of fantasy world. By her own account, she was the one to tell Kozinski of her interest in porn, and he suggested against it.

She has a weird complaint that a friend emailed her 20 years later that the judge undressed her with his eyes! How would anyone know that? Then there is a complaint that he referred her to a reporter writing a book on the courts. She said that she can't talk about confidential matters, and he said that was fine. So what's the problem? I refuse to believe that a woman who writes porn for a living could really be upset by seeing a picture with a little photoshopped nudity.

I don't know what this woman's problem is, but it is very strange for the NY Times and Wash. Post to make an issue out of some trivial conversations 10 years ago.

Update: Kozinski resigned a couple of days later, on Dec. 18. The carnage continue. I wonder if the accusers will ever suffer any consequences for their behavior.

Which brings us to Bond’s career choices. Her rejection of what might have been — an illustrious future as a law professor, government lawyer, judge, law firm partner — seems to have its roots with her awful experience with Kozinski. And though she writes that she had a positive time clerking for Justices O’Connor and Kennedy, it’s ultimately Kozinski who cast the biggest shadow in her career.

Did she try to seduce Kozinski, or what? It appears that she fell in love with him.